Protection Sought For Steelhead

With 23 runs already extinct, the government on Tuesday recommended legal protection for the steelhead run in the Snake River Basin of Idaho and Eastern Washington and several other species in the Northwest and on the West Coast.

“Today’s decisions don’t change what all of us on the West Coast have known for some time - all salmon and sea-run trout need our help,” said Hilda DiazSolteror, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service Southwest regional office in Long Beach, Calif.

Diaz-Solteror said state and local conservation initiatives hold the key to restoration of the runs, and the “federal government is already working cooperatively with the states and localities affected.”

The announcement kicked off a yearlong public comment period before the fisheries service decides whether to designate the Snake River steelhead threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Steelhead, a member of the salmon family, is considered the Northwest’s prize game fish among anglers because of how difficult it is to catch.

It has no immediate regulatory impact but serves as a warning that streamside land use restrictions could follow. The government’s endangered declarations for the Snake River sockeye salmon in 1991 and the springsummer and fall chinook salmon runs in 1994 have already disrupted logging, grazing and mining in some areas of the state with little affect on revitalizing those runs.

Sportsmen and river users fear the same result with steelhead.

“They’ll grapple around and look for something to blame, and they’re likely to come up with sport fishing in Idaho, anything to shift the blame” away from the lower Snake River dams in Eastern Washington, said Charles Ray of Idaho Rivers United. “They’ll look for a scapegoat.”

The dams have been blamed for killing 99 percent of the migrating salmon and steelhead but the focus of recovery efforts has been on increasing water flows rather than modifying the dams to improve fish passage.

“I hate to see it because it scares me about what could happen,” said Darren Huntsman of Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited, concerned that Idaho’s multimillion-dollar sport-fishing industry and its 2,700 jobs could be in jeopardy.

“But part of me is optimistic because it could get some of the big entities off their butts and make them do something,” Huntsman said.

State fishery experts are not as fearful that sport fishing is at risk since the state already requires release of wild steelhead. Only hatchery-reared fish, identified by a clipped adipose fin, may be kept.

“I think we’ll be able to demonstrate that incidental wild fish mortality from catch-and-release fishing is very low,” said Sharon Kiefer, fisheries coordinator for the state Department of Fish and Game. Studies indicate that only 10 percent of the wild fish handled by Idaho anglers die as a result of being caught and released, she said.

“I don’t expect to see the steelhead sport fishery targeted at the top of the list.”

But if steelhead are protected, some alterations could be required in the state’s hatchery program. Federal officials could ask Idaho to stop releasing hatchery fish in the vicinity of natural spawning grounds to reduce the likelihood of mixing wild and hatchery genes, Kiefer said.

Idaho already refrains from using wild fish as a hatchery broodstock, unlike downstream and coastal hatcheries.

Also recommended for protection were steelhead runs in the:

Lower Columbia River.

Coastal Oregon.

Coastal northern California.

Inland Oregon to Salem.

The government’s fish experts announced their recommendations after a federal judge last month ordered the government to issue a formal finding on a long-delayed petition to protect the runs.

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